


Bluff and Call

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [11]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Fights, Gen, Making Up, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 20:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20215933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: They didn't fight --reallyfight -- all that often these days. But every once in a while, Danny's prickly places -- and he did have them -- ran headlong into Ward's prickly places (which was most of him; Ward sometimes felt like a human porcupine) and they ended up verbally tearing strips off each other at 2 a.m.





	Bluff and Call

**Author's Note:**

> For a Tumblr prompt: _What about Ward and Danny fight/argue about something, very intense with a lot of shouting. At some point Danny flinches, because he thought Ward was close hitting him. Ward is super sad and upset, because becoming like Harold one day is his biggest fear._

They didn't fight -- _really_ fight -- all that often these days, though Ward thought it was mostly down to Danny's generally relaxed attitude and willingness to just roll with Ward being cranky or irritating or just straight-up being a jerk to him. What Ward really couldn't quite get over was that it didn't seem to be Danny actively trying to get along and not make waves. He would have understood that more easily. It was just ... he didn't seem to get under Danny's skin. At least not much. There was surface irritation, and playful jabs in return, but for the most part, Danny seemed to be able to brush off even Ward's prickliest moods with a good-natured grin and a shrug.

But every once in a while, Danny's prickly places -- and he did have them -- ran headlong into Ward's prickly places (which was most of him; Ward sometimes felt like a human porcupine) and they ended up verbally tearing strips off each other at 2 a.m.

It was the rain that had done it this time. Or at least that was what Ward chose to blame. It had kept them both inside for two days, stuck in a single room in a shitty little hotel, and even when they did go out, it was cold and miserable, and everything was closed in this stupid little mountain town. And Ward felt like he'd been fighting off a cold for the last couple of days, either that or the altitude was giving him a headache, and that was just the last tiny edge that his temper needed to fray to a ragged fringe.

So they'd been snapping and snarling at each other, and sulking around in the hotel room, trying not to make eye contact. It was one of those situations where every last thing about each other was starting to turn into a hell of mutual annoyance: the way Danny _stirred his tea_ was driving Ward fucking bonkers, and Danny had already asked Ward three times if he could stop drumming his fingers on the wall, but _no he couldn't,_ because it was soothing (sort of) and at least it gave him something to do other than walking out the door and going looking for the nearest bar.

"Ward, really. You need to stop tapping your foot like that. I can't concentrate."

"Concentrate on what?" Ward snapped back. "Because what you're doing over there is so important?"

"I'm meditating," Danny said between his teeth. "It's soothing."

"You sound very soothed."

"Ward, would you just ..." Danny took a breath. "Shut up. For a little while. Please."

"No."

Danny sat up abruptly, grabbed a box of tea bags off the table next to him, and hurled it across the room. Ward jumped to his feet; he hadn't seen that explosive a reaction from Danny since the very earliest days when he'd known him, and for an instant he found himself going into automatic defense mode, wanting to put his hands up. He'd almost forgotten that Danny had once pointed a gun at him. 

"You're the most annoying person on the planet sometimes, Ward, you know that?"

"Oh, look who's talking! Captain Chi over there ..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What _that_ means is that you never met a situation you didn't have an annoying K'un Lun saying for, or that meditation didn't solve, or acupuncture --"

"I have never once practiced _zhen jiu_ on you, and anyway, it's a discipline that I haven't mastered because it takes years to --"

"This is what I'm fucking talking about! You're a goddamn expert in everything and you correct me constantly and there are times when I'd like to shove your teeth in just to keep you from telling me I'm wrong all the time --"

"Yeah?" Danny snapped, getting to his feet too. "Try it, then. Just try it!"

"Fine!" Ward snarled back, "if that's what it'll take to make you _shut up_ \--" and he had his hands balled into fists, and before he knew what he was doing, started to throw a punch.

And Danny didn't block or dodge, he just ... flinched.

Ward checked himself in shock, at himself and at Danny, and swung around and smacked his fist into the wall. Danny stared at him, and Ward stood there feeling shame, cold and burning hot at the same time, pouring over him.

"Sorry," he said, strangled, and he turned around and opened the door and stepped out into the rain sluicing down on the terrace outside.

He walked, just walked. He needed to get away. The rain cut through his light shirt like needles of ice. It had felt too warm inside the hotel room, the humidity lending extra warmth to the air, but out here it was cold.

He didn't care. He kept moving. His hair and clothes were plastered to his body. It was cold and miserable and he just ... needed. To get. _Away._

He stopped on some kind of bridge and pressed his face into his hands, ran his hands through his wet hair.

One of the pillars on which he'd built his post-Harold existence was that he was _not_ Harold, and he wasn't going to be Harold. But there hadn't even been any thought to it, nothing but action. That cold violent rage washed through him, and he just wanted to _hurt._ He'd wanted to hit Danny. He couldn't stop thinking about the way Danny had jerked away and backed down. Danny, who could easily deflect an entire barrage of punches of the sort that Ward was capable of throwing.

Like father, like son, he thought, grinding the heel of his hand into his eyes. After all, hadn't he hurt Danny in the past? His knuckles burned from hitting the wall, and he had to grin, a cold and humorless smile, because Harold had worked out on the boxing bag every day, and once again Ward was nothing but a pale imitation of his dad. Couldn't even get the abusive asshole part right.

"Ward!"

God, he thought, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until colorful whorls broke out in his vision, just go _away_, Danny. 

But Danny of course didn't. He pursued Ward onto the bridge and paused a few feet behind him, gripping the stone railing. "Ward! It's you, right? If I'm talking to a stranger, I'm gonna feel really stupid, but -- Ward -- I'm sorry."

Somehow Danny apologizing to _him_ was just the cherry topping on the shit sundae. "Go _away,"_ Ward snapped. Speaking aloud made him realize his teeth were chattering. He was cold down to the core, partly from the rain and partly just from ... he didn't even know, but it came from inside him, not outside.

"I will, if you want me to," Danny said earnestly. "But I wanted to ... to apologize, Ward; I know Harold used to --" He took a shaky-sounding breath, and that along with the weird note in his voice made Ward turn and look at him, only to realize he couldn't get a good read on Danny's expression in the night and the rain. And now Danny wasn't saying anything.

"Danny?" Ward said. 

"I didn't mean," Danny began. He paused and took a deep breath, swiping his wet hair back with a quick brush of his hand. "I didn't mean to ... to make you think of Harold. Ward, I would _never._ I don't want you to ever feel like you have to defend yourself against me, I mean, I know what it feels like, when adults -- _hit_ you, when you can't do anything about it, and Ward, I'm sorry, I didn't ever want you to -- to think you had to -- with _me_ \--"

Ward had to do something to dam the flood of babbling, so he grabbed Danny's arms, both of them -- bare upper arms, making him realize Danny was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt in this cold deluge. Had just followed him out here like that.

"You're cold," he said, though he could hardly even tell, the way his hands were shaking and his teeth were chattering in the downpour.

"I know," Danny said, with a faint laugh. "Ward, I'm sorry."

"Would you stop goddamn apologizing?" he said, somewhere between yelling and laughing, but it came out broken and shaky because of the damn _shivering._ So he hauled Danny in for a hug instead, because at least that was kind of warm.

"I'm sorry," Danny said again, very soft and quiet and broken into his shoulder, and that was what finally got him past the blockage in his throat to just fucking _talking about this like a grownup._

"I didn't leave because I was afraid of _you,_" he muttered against the side of Danny's head. Rain sluiced over them both and he had to spit out a wet curl of Danny's blond mop. "I don't want to be Harold, to you or anyone. I just left to stop me from --"

"Wait, you what?"

"Can we have this conversation inside?" He was shivering in earnest now, and could feel Danny shivering too. And the rain wasn't slacking. "If we both catch pneumonia on this bridge, we're going to feel like a couple of idiots while we hack up a lung in the hospital, you know that?"

"Yeah," Danny said, and laughed a little. 

Ward led the way back. Just to set a good example.

*

They toweled off and Danny put on water for tea, because of course he did. Ward curled up under a pile of blankets on one of the beds, and Danny eventually came over and sat on the edge of the bed with his hands wrapped around his mug of tea.

"You're not mad at me?" Danny asked, a little bit plaintive.

"Will you stop," Ward said from underneath the blanket amoeba that had swallowed him whole. He hoped that blanketless Danny was warming up with some ridiculous chi trick, because Ward was still shivering, even buried in quilts and a sleeping bag. 

If he were going to analyze it, which he most definitely was _not_, he might suspect it wasn't entirely physical. 

Danny wasn't saying anything, so Ward went on, "I'm the one who was being a violent shithead."

"No you weren't," Danny said decisively. "You were just trying to defend yourself. I _get_ that."

"Danny, there is no defense in the world that's worth me being -- that."

Danny set the cup on the bedside table and then flopped on the bed next to Ward, wrapping the corner of the blanket around himself. "Ward, you're nothing at all like Harold. Not in any way."

"Except when I try to hit you," Ward said. He rolled away, eyes screwed shut. "Just like I tried to kill you, and locked you up, and almost took your company away from you. Blood will out, isn't that what they say?"

He had brief advance warning from the dipping of the mattress before Danny, blanket-wrapped, rolled into his back with a light thump.

"I figured you left because you were afraid of me," Danny said quietly. "Like ... like with Harold."

"Danny ... no ..." He couldn't have Danny thinking that, especially when Danny sounded stressed and utterly miserable about it. "Danny. No. Nothing you've done could _ever_ \-- I left so I wouldn't hurt you and you wouldn't have to look at me, okay?"

There was a silence. Then Danny gave a small, huffing laugh, and rested his forehead against Ward's shoulder.

Through the point of contact, Ward could tell that Danny was still shivering a little, but he felt Danny settling down, relaxing slowly. 

Eventually Danny said in a voice just slightly louder than the rain, "I really am sorry."

Ward bit down on his first, second, and third replies, and finally found the right one. "Me too. I didn't really mean any of that. Well, not most of it. The K'un Lun sayings are a bit much sometimes."

Danny laughed a little. "I can try to stop."

"No, don't. If I didn't have anything ridiculous and stupid to get annoyed at you for, I might have to find something more important. Anyway, it's you. I don't want you to ..." He took a deep breath. "To be less ... you."

"You're not annoying. I shouldn't have said that."

"Oh yes I am," Ward said. "Ask anyone who has to deal with me on a regular basis. The board of directors. My assistants. The barista at the coffee shop down the street."

Danny huffed out a little sigh. "Let me rephrase that. Most of the time, I don't find you annoying. Everyone's annoying sometimes."

"Now?" Ward said, unable to help himself; it was the sibling in him. "Am I annoying now?"

Danny sat up and smacked his shoulder. "Yes." But there was a laugh in it. "Do you want some tea? It'll warm you up."

"Yay, tea," Ward said without enthusiasm, but he sat up and Danny brought him a mug of tea, steaming hot and sweetened with honey. It wasn't coffee, and it definitely wasn't booze, but it actually was warming and, in its own way, kind of soothing. 

Danny sat on the end of the bed with a leg curled up under him. "Do you want to sleep?" he asked quietly.

Yes, Ward wanted to sleep. Badly. But the dreamless oblivion he hoped for was not, he suspected, in his future tonight. Harold, and everything that went along with Harold, was too close to the surface right now. He knew too much about nights like this, was too familiar with the exhausting, constantly interrupted not-sleep that was more exhausting than just staying up.

"Nah," he said. "Don't think I could yet. You can, if you want. I'll just read."

Danny shook his head. His hair had dried into spikes and squiggles. "I'm not really sleepy either. I could go for a walk, if you want to be alone."

"In _that?"_ Ward gestured with his mug of tea at the rain cascading off the eaves. "You'll get washed right off the side of the mountain."

Danny grinned briefly. "I won't go too far. In K'un Lun --" He stopped short. "It won't bother me," he finished.

Ward sighed and got up, clutching the blanket around his shoulders. He set the tea mug on the edge of the table, and went and dug a deck of cards out of his pack. "I think it's time for you to teach me another of Colleen's poker games. You know, if I were going to guess, I'd never have expected the woman was a master of the poker arts on top of everything else."

"She's good," Danny said, perking up as he always did at the mention of Colleen.

"Yeah, well, let's see if _you're_ good enough to win back the buck-fifty you lost to me last night." Ward tossed a handful of change onto the table. "And I want to hear whatever you were going to say about rain. Does it involve you standing on one foot in the rain while holding full water buckets in each hand?"

"Um ... not _all_ of that."

Ward laughed, and Danny halfway grinned, and that was the thing about Danny, wasn't it? He could make Ward laugh, even on a night like tonight when Ward felt like shit, and the rain wouldn't stop, and it felt as if Harold was just one thrown punch away, and a drink was right beyond the tips of his fingers.

Instead, he shuffled the cards, and Danny made them more tea, and they played poker while rain drummed on the roof and Danny talked about mountains and waterfalls and other rains in other places. And when he looked back on this night later, although he remembered the fight with embarrassing clarity, there was this to soften it: the taste of tea, the worn edges of the cards, the quiet sound of Danny's laugh and the clink of coins as Ward raked a handful of change toward his side of the table.


End file.
